Safe Car Choices for Teen Drivers

In a recent article at Forbes.com, author Dan Lienart discussed their annual picks for smart cars for teens.

The
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) announced that Ford has
made changes to its $18,000 Fusion sedan, and better safety
ratings...resulted," began Leinert. "But safety isn't the only reason
the Fusion has made the list of 15 smart cars for teenagers," Leinert
continued "It is also inexpensive and has good gas mileage (23/31
city/highway, under optimal configurations). It has 'very good'
accident-avoidance capabilities... and 'much better than average'
predicted reliability."

"What's more," Leinert said "it has
overall manufacturing quality that is between 'about average' and
'better than most,' according to J.D. Power and Associates."

"A great choice for teenagers, no doubt," claimed Leinert. but the
Fusion is just one of 15 on this year's list of best cars for teens.
"All offer the market's best combination of value, fuel economy,
safety, reliability and quality."

Other
vehicles on the list included the Honda Civic, "thanks to value (base
price $15,000), excellent accident-avoidance capabilities and better
than average reliability."

THE LIST:

Chevrolet Malibu
Chrysler PT Cruiser
Ford Escape
Ford Fusion

Honda Accord Sedan
Honda Civic
Honda Element
Hyundai Sonata

Kia SpectraMercury Milan
Pontiac Vibe
Subaru Outback Wagon

Toyota Camry
Toyota Corolla
Toyota Matrix

In
forming the list above, Leinert explained, they "looked at all
new-model cars at the market, and eliminated from consideration any
vehicle with a base price of $20,000 or higher."

They also eliminated any model that "lacked, for whatever reason, an
accident-avoidance rating or predicted-reliability rating from Consumer Reports,
a J.D. Power rating for overall manufacturing quality or a full set of
NHTSA safety ratings (meaning we eliminated any car that does not have
two frontal-star ratings, two side-star ratings and a
rollover-resistance rating)." Leinert explains, "Not every car on the
market is tested by these organizations, and not every car has all of
these ratings, but we wouldn't put our kids into cars without the
availability of such critical information."

Leinart's article
also discussed the considerations of new versus used, for those readers
who ask "Who can afford to buy their kids new cars?" Leinart said,
"While we are aware that the same model is ordinarily a better deal as
a used car than a new one, the aim ... is to provide readers
information about the newest vehicles on the market. Because this is an
annual look, we need to focus only on new cars in order to make the
piece newsworthy."

In case some parents notice that no SUV's
made the list, Leinert explained, "when we set out to write this piece
we intended to include SUVs. But we found that in addition to a dearth
of cheap SUVs on the market, only two SUVs came close to comparing
favorably with the passenger cars on our list. Concerns with fuel
efficiency and safety tended to keep SUVs off the list. While we
understand some parents' bias toward the tall trucks, SUVs do not
measure up quantitatively under the criteria we feel are most important
in selecting cars for teenagers."